


Bargain

by Junkfoodmonkey



Category: Ashes to Ashes (UK TV), Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 08:43:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junkfoodmonkey/pseuds/Junkfoodmonkey
Summary: Jack Harkness meets a woman out of time and makes a bargain to save an innocent life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this a long time ago, and of course the ending of Ashes to Ashes completely jossed it. So it is at least AU for that universe, but maybe not for Torchwood.

The CID squad room I walked into had a sleepy air. A couple of detectives sat at desks reading files, or possibly dozing. One uniformed WPC was typing away busily, though and she looked wide-awake. Wide-awake and cute as a button. I discreetly checked the scanner in my pocket and headed over to her.

“Hi,” I gave her a big smile. “I’m here to see Detective Inspector Alex Drake.”

The typing faltered and her eyes widened as she gave me the old once up and down. “Cor! I mean… sorry, Mr…?”

“Captain Jack Harkness.”

“Captain? Cor.”

Much as I was enjoying her smile, I needed to get to work. The scanner was positively humming in my pocket with the strength of the readings coming from somewhere very close by.

“Is DI Drake in here?” I nodded at the door to an office near to her desk.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so. That’s Mr Hunt’s office.”

I froze. “Gene Hunt?” What the hell was Hunt doing here? I saw the name on the door even as the WPC nodded a confirmation. Okay, this I had to check out. “Any chance I can talk to him then? Tell him I’m from Torchwood.”

She knocked on the office door and went in while I waited, grinning back at the suspicious gazes of the men in squad room. Some muffled words came from the office, and then the WPC came back, still smiling.

“You can go in, Captain. I’m Shazza by the way. I mean WPC Grainger.”

“Nice to meet you, Shazza.” I winked. She blushed and as I stepped into the office, closing the door behind me, I heard her saying “What?” to someone, in an innocent tone.

“Cap’n Jack Harkness,” I said, approaching Gene Hunt with my hand out. Gene stood and we exchanged one of those competitive shakes. I’d only seen him at a distance before, when dealing with the Tyler case and hadn’t fully appreciated the presence of the man. His personality filled the room wall to wall.

“DCI Gene Hunt. Now who the bloody hell are Torchwood?”

“Special Operations.”

“Oh, just what I need. What’s this about then?” He sat and waved me to the chair on the other side of his desk. “You come to give me the heads up on some special operation you’re running on my patch?”

“Not exactly,” I said, sitting down. The door opened and Shazza reappeared, with two coffee mugs and a plate of biscuits. The mug she handed me declared that you didn’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helped. Should pick up a few of those for back at the Hub.

“I brought the chocolate digestives,” she said, offering me the plate.

“You certainly know how to keep a man happy, Shazza.” Her giggle and Gene’s eye roll came at the same instant.

“Will you get out,” Gene snapped. She left the plate of biscuits on the desk and walked out, with her nose in the air. “Have you got some kind of official business, Harkness? Or did you just come here to get the plonk’s knickers in a twist?”

Okay, back to business. I studied him for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. The name, Gene Hunt, had come a hell of a shock to my system, the last person I expected to find here. Could it be that Alex Drake was not the only problem?

“Can I ask you some questions, Mr Hunt?”

“What do I get in return? Nylons and Hershey Bars?”

“Have you ever been to Cardiff, sir?” Despite an instinctive stir of anger at his generally hostile attitude, I tried some deference. Maybe the “sir” would help mollify the alpha male that something about me seemed to be aggravating.

“Cardiff?” Gene stared, as if I’d asked if he’d ever been to the moon.

“In Wales.”

“Yes, I know where it is, thank you. I don’t need a Yank to tell me where Cardiff is.”

“And have you? Been there?”

“Yes, actually.” Gene looked thoughtful. “Aye, I was there once. People kept asking me if I’d heard any news from the Crimea.”

“It’s not the most modern place,” I admitted. “Did anything unusual happen while you were there?”

“Well Cardiff City scored. That was quite unusual.”

“Ah, you were there for the football.” I grinned, all lads together. “I expect you had a few drinks afterwards.”

“No, sonny, I had a lot of drinks afterwards. Don’t know how else a man could get through a night in that town. Do they still take the roads in at nine o’clock?”

“When was this?” I fished a small notebook out of my pocket. “Do you happen to remember the exact date?”

“Late-sixties sometime. No I don’t know the exact date.”

“Who were Cardiff City playing?”

“Who do you bloody think?” Gene’s strong Manchester accent made me grimace at my silly question.

“I meant City or United?”

“City of course. I’m _from_ Manchester. What the hell are you asking me this for? You came here to ask me if I’ve ever been to Cardiff?”

“Not really. I came to see Alex Drake.”

“Drake? I think she’s questioning a suspect. Trying some psychological bollocks on him, I expect. Hang on.” Gene rose and strode to the door. “Hoy, one of you lot wake up and go and fetch Bolly. She’s got a visitor.”

Bolly? I mouthed silently, trying to figure it out. Even after a century I still hadn’t got the hang of the arcane rules of British nicknames. I suspect I never would, since I haven’t been drinking tea and watching cricket since birth.

After a few minutes of me smiling into Gene’s Force 10 glare, the door banged back and a woman strode into the room. She stopped in front of the desk hands on hips – nice hips in jeans that must have taken the help of a shoe-horn to put on.

“I was at a crucial stage! Three hours of work and you’ve ruined it. I’ll have to start from scratch.”

“Crucial stage?” Gene said. “Ray said he hasn’t actually spoken a word since you took him in there.”

“I was making progress.”

“How could you tell? Did he let off an especially revealing fart?”

Alex threw up her hands and looked ready to start haranguing Gene again, but finally noticed me. I could have spoken before, but frankly, I was enjoying the show. In those sprayed on jeans Alex Drake was a distraction to a man. “I’m sorry.” She gathered herself and swept her wavy hair behind her ear. “And you are?”

“Captain Jack Harkness. Torchwood.” I offered my hand. “I’m sorry, ma’am, afraid I’m the one who interrupted your interrogation.”

Gene snorted. “Interrogation! I’ve had massages rougher than her interrogations.”

“Really?” I said. “You must give me the name of your masseur, I like my massages a little rough.” Ignoring Gene’s glare I tried the wink on Alex, but she was a DI, not a PC. Not immune, but too professional to blush and giggle.

“Torchwood?” Alex said, shaking my hand.

“Yes. We’re a –”

“Special Ops, yes. What do you want with me?”

I kept on shaking her hand, but with my smile suddenly fixed like a bug in amber. She knows Torchwood? Worrying and interesting all at once. Did I just get a glimpse into Torchwood’s future? A future out of the shadows? Speaking of glimpses, I spared one for Gene and found him watching me suspiciously.

“Can we go talk in private, ma’am?” I said, which only increased Gene’s suspicion. But I couldn’t ask her here in front of him. What was I supposed to do, just come out and say it?

_What year are you from?_

~~

She took me to the staff canteen and we got cups of tea and slices of Battenberg cake. These London folks sure know how to live the high life.

“So, Captain Harkness, what does Torchwood want with me?”

“Call me Jack.” I peeled marzipan off the cake and separated the four squares of sponge. Displacement activity. Appearing intent on cake disassembly, I considered my next words. How did I ask her? You’re not from around here are you? You’re not from around _now_ are you? On the other hand, I had a million things I wanted to ask her. Of course I know about the major events coming in the next few decades. But she’d been part of them.

I can’t even say that about the events I’ve lived through since I found myself stranded here on Earth. I’ve seen the world engulfed in war twice. I saw the Great Depression and the Cold War and yet could never be part of them – unable to share the fear of hunger or destruction. Always an outsider. Always an observer forced to stay distant. Never interfere. Never use my knowledge to change things.

How hard it had been to resist that sometimes. Temptation to interfere made me book a ticket for the Titanic. Because I knew. Because I wanted to speak and save them all. But I didn’t. In the end I let myself sink into the freezing water and shared the only part of it that I could.

Death.

It had been a kind of penance.

“Jack?” Alex said, rousing me from memories of glamour and icy oblivion.

“Alex,” I said, biting the bullet – used to do that trick with the travelling shows. “Let me be blunt.” Taking the plunge – too many times to count. “You’re from the future.”

It wasn’t a question. No point. If this was all a mistake, an anomalous reading, she’d think I was a madman, and that would be that. When she didn’t answer, only stared, I went on.

“About thirty years ahead, if our readings are correct.”

“Which of them put you up to this?”

“Which? Oh, your colleagues?” What the hell had she told them? “It’s not them. Torchwood has special equipment, very special.”

She stared at me some more, then snorted and pushed her chair back. “I don’t have time for this.” She spun away, began to stalk out of the room.

“Alex, wait!”

She didn’t stop. But I was ready. I had two words I knew would stop her. I stood and called out again.

“Nine eleven!”

They worked. She stopped and looked back at me, eyes round as saucers. The rest of the room had silenced too, everyone staring at me. Where would I be on that day? Still waiting in Cardiff, or long gone? Paying my penance on an upper floor of the North Tower?

“Sorry mate,” one of the uniformed officers said. “Nine eleven is Alan Green. He’s not on duty right now.” He patted the three-digit number on his epaulette. His was 108. I ignored him. Alex knew what I meant. She edged back to me, still staring, until she was close enough to whisper.

“How do you know about that?”

“History classes.”

“What? History?” She shook her head, baffled.

“I’m from further ahead. But right now, I’m here. And so are you and neither of us belong here. Please. Hear me out.” We sat again and the rest of the canteen lost interest in us. Alex gazed into her half-full teacup for a while, brow furrowed, then looked at me, eyes still full of suspicion.

“Do you know about Sam Tyler?” she asked.

I carefully concealed my reaction to that question. “I know of Sam’s case, yes.”

“This is… real?”

“It’s real.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. Of course you know about nine eleven, because I know about that. Because you’re just another construct I made up.” She sat back, looking me over, with undisguised appreciation. Then she snorted and shook her head. “My imagination is a little obvious sometimes. What’s next? A shirtless fireman carrying a puppy?”

Nice picture. “You can have the puppy.” But I didn’t like the rest of what she said. She didn’t think this was real. That made her even more dangerous than Sam Tyler. If she thought the only consequences were inside her head then she could destroy this world trying to escape from it.

“This is real, Alex. This is 1981.”

“Well, you would say that.” She looked thoughtful for a while, then leaned forward, steepling her fingers on the table. “Alright, let’s be logical about this. Some part of my mind wants me to treat this as real. It wants me to act as if it is real, so it has created you to tell me to do that. Therefore there has to be a reason why. Because everything is significant.”

After a moment of trying to follow that, I said, “I think we have different definitions of ‘logical’.”

“Okay, Captain Jack Harkness.” She leaned over the table and stole a square of my Battenberg cake. “Let’s pretend this is indeed all real. I have a question for you. How are you going to get me home?”


	2. Chapter 2

Home, sweet, home.

Well, home anyway. I stepped into the Hub, tossing my coat at the nearest chair.

“David!” I called out. A young guy, all glasses and messy hair, popped his head up from the small fortress of filing cabinets that surrounded his desk. “I need you to find me a date.”

“I’m a researcher, not a matchmaker,” David said, reaching for the pen stuck behind his ear.

“Hah! Late 1960s. I want a date when Cardiff City played Manchester City at home and Cardiff City scored at least one goal.”

“Is this official business?” David asked, writing on a notepad. “Or did you fall asleep in the middle of A Question of Sport and miss an answer?”

“Official, I’m afraid. Fast as you can, kid.”

“On it.” He vanished back behind his cabinets.

I climbed the stairs to the office and had only just sat down at the desk when a young blonde woman came in with a mug of coffee, a smile and an English accent.

“Back from the big smoke then? I hope their big city ways didn’t corrupt you.”

“More like the other way around. Thanks, Anna.” I took the mug from her and sipped the coffee. Instant coffee, like the mug I’d got from Shazza at the police station. Seemed like I was in for a long wait before the British got past the idea of coffee as something digital. Not coffee/coffee! Preferred it a bit more analogue myself. But I gave her a grateful smile anyway. “Got some work for you. I need archived data about Rift activity. David’s tracking down a date. It will probably take him a while though –”

“Found it,” David said, appearing at the office door, his glasses on the top of his head and a torn off notebook page in his hand.

“What, already?” I think I gaped. “How the hell did you -?”

“Called my Uncle Dai, didn’t I? What he doesn’t know about Cardiff City you don’t need to know. 18th February 1967. It was an FA cup game and the score was 1-1. Man City won on the replay.” He grimaced. “That sound like what you’re after?”

“Perfect, David, perfect.” I chuckled. “Who needs the Internet?”

“The Inter-what?”

“Never mind. You don’t need it. Anna, pull the archives for Rift activity and anything else on that date. David, you can give her a hand, since you already finished your research.”

“Oh great,” David said. “The tape store. Between the dust and the ghost…”

“There is no ghost,” I said, and got sceptical looks from them both. “Yes, I admit there’s something down there. It’s just not technically a ghost.”

“It mixes up the tapes,” Anna said. “Which makes it technically a pain in the arse. Okay, we’re on it, Jack.” She left the office and I watched her go, with some appreciation. David, being gentlemanly, let her pass first and followed. I appreciated that view as well and sighed. Decisions, decisions.

With them off to the tape store to search the archives, I sat at the desk, not looking at the phone. I didn’t look at it especially hard. I looked at messages and files and even today’s newspaper. I looked at anything except the phone.

Orders, Jack, I told myself eventually, when I ran out of things to read and had filled in the crossword with obscure Sontaran swear-words. Got to report back. I could have reported back in person at Torchwood One, while I was up in London. But that would have meant actually being in the same room as Vincent and not punching him in the face. If he’d put on that smug expression of his, I’m not sure I could have managed the ‘not punching’ part.

Get it over with. I picked up the receiver and dialled.

“Harkness,” I said, when Vincent’s secretary answered. “Let me talk to Vincent, please.”

“Oh, hello, Jack,” she positively cooed. “I hear you were in London and you didn’t come to see me. I’m devastated.”

“Sorry, hon.” What the hell was her name again? “Had to get back to Cardiff.” I sighed. I’d rather hang on the line flirting with whatshername, than talk to her boss, but I should get on with it. “I promise, next time I’m in town, you and me, candlelight and champagne. But I need to talk to Vincent now.”

“Hold on,” she said, voice more businesslike. “Putting you through.”

A moment of muzak and then Vincent spoke. “Harkness. You’re back in Cardiff? Why didn’t you come here and report direct?”

“Urgent business.”

“Did you make contact with Drake?”

“Yes.”

“And? Is she the real thing?”

I wanted to say no, because I knew what it meant. I knew what it had meant for Sam Tyler, once Torchwood figured out we had a man from the future running around – a man from the future who didn’t work for us. A man we couldn’t control.

“Yes.” I took the portable scanner from my pocket. The one I’d had running the whole time in the police station. I’d sat in my car later and looked at the readings and took the fastest route back to Cardiff. “She’s the real thing.”

“And she admitted it to you?”

“Yes. But she doesn’t think it’s real. She thinks it’s all in her mind.”

Silence from Vincent for a second. “You know that makes her twice as dangerous.”

“Yes.”

“You know what you have to do.”

“Vincent, it’s different than with Tyler. He was… stubborn. But Alex _wants_ to go home. She has a kid back home. Can’t we do something?”

“Like what, Jack? Break out the time machine and send her back to the future? Oh wait, we don’t have a time machine, do we? Sorry, I must have been thinking about something else.”

I gritted my teeth and wrapped the curly phone cord around my hand. If I’d been reporting in person about now is when I’d have failed at the ‘no punching’ part.

“You know what has to be done, Jack.”

“It’s not that simple. I think I found out why she’s here, why Sam was here, what brought them here.”

“Oh, and what’s that?”

“Well, it’s not so much a what as a who.”

~~

Now I hated myself for giving Vincent the name Gene Hunt. The cause of this. The connection. Sam and Alex didn’t end up with Gene by coincidence.

“Then you have to deal with him,” Vincent had said. “If he’s attracting them, then he’s the real problem.”

Trouble was, he might also be a solution. But only for me. To Vincent he’s a threat, to me… a hope. Faint, perhaps foolish, but hope.

“Jack, you listening? We’re here.”

I turned my attention back to David as he parked in a residential street. Not the poshest area of Cardiff, not the suburbs by any means. Just pre-war terraced houses, with scrubbed front steps that told of proud families within.

“It’s that one,” Anna said from the back seat, using something she kept carefully concealed from any passers-by.

“The bed and breakfast?” I looked up at it. Three of the terraced homes had been turned into one large house, with a ‘Vacancies’ sign hanging in a window. The nets and chintz curtains in that window harked back to the 1950s, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find a “No dogs or Irish” sign still on the door.

“You think Hunt stayed here that night?” David asked.

“Let’s find out. Police IDs, people. Anna, you’re forensics. Get all the readings you can.” I distributed fake warrant cards that made us all members of Cardiff CID, and left my coat behind, slipping on a more innocuous jacket.

Alex’s recognition of the name Torchwood came back to me. In thirty years time would we be able to walk in there and announce we were Torchwood and expect people to know what that meant? We? Or just me? I glanced at my companions. David had been with Torchwood almost three years, Anna two, both recruited right out of university after finishing advanced degrees. Recruited to replace – don’t think about that. Three years and two years. Hell, you could almost call them veterans.

They wouldn’t be with me in thirty years.

“Let’s go.”

Not much chance of ending up needing replacement staff members after this mission. Though the landlady, Mrs Williams, was quite terrifying in her own way, she didn’t seem likely to attempt to rip our throats out, inject alien eggs into our chest cavities, control our minds through telepathic coercion or any of the other daily hazards of working for Torchwood.

Seeing two men and one woman coming into her rooming house together she took on an expression of moral outrage, instantly winning the Dirtiest Mind in the Room prize. And in a room that contains me, that’s going some. Her face softened only a little when we all produced our fake police IDs.

“Inspector Harkness. I need to see your records of guests from 1967.”

She stared. “ _Sixty_ -seven?”

“That’s right. Do you still have them?”

“They’ll be in the loft. It might take me a while to find them.”

“Constable,” I said to David. “Assist the lady, please.”

David hustled her upstairs before she could object further and I turned to Anna, who put her bag down on a spindly-legged hall table that held an olive green Trimphone.

“The readings are residual,” Anna said. “But they match what you brought back from London.”

“From Alex?”

She shook her head. “No. Those were pretty ordinary temporal signatures, entirely expected. These readings are different and they match the ones you took from Gene Hunt.”

“But definitely Rift energy?” I’d recognised the distinctive Rift energy signature on my scanner as soon as I walked into the CID offices.

“Definitely Rift energy. And it matches the records from that night. A surge of Rift energy came through very strongly at this location, but…” she shook her head, bit her lip. “There are differences too. Not just in strength, we’ve recorded stronger surges many time, but the particles I’m reading are highly unusual. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They’ve got a distinctive temporal signature.”

“Are you recording the readings,” I said, glancing down at the device she was using. Cardiff CID definitely didn’t have one of these.

“Yes. I’ll have to run it through the mainframe when I get back to get a full analysis, but this is really interesting, Jack, it’s like -” She broke off and shoved the still running scanner back into her bag as David and Mrs Williams came back down the stairs, her carrying a book.

She handed the book to me and I blew off a layer of dust, invoking a severe glare from the landlady. Okay, February, sixty-seven. I flicked through the yellowing pages, the names of mostly men flashing by, most staying for a night and moving on again. Transient visits. February, and there it was. For one night only, visiting from Manchester, England, one Gene Hunt. He was here. On that night. On that night the Rift surged.

“He was in room ten,” I said, almost to myself. “We need to see that room.”

~~

I tore the paper from the clattering printer, ripping though a sheet and earning a frown from David, who always detached pieces so neatly at the perforations.

“The readings in room ten were residual too,” Anna said, pointing them out on the printout, “but with a higher concentration of those unusual particles. And I checked the other two dates you gave me. The Rift was highly active then too, and so were those particles in room ten. It’s as if when the Rift flares, those residual particles are excited, even if the Rift activity isn’t centred on that location.”

“If Gene Hunt was… infected with those particles, would they be active in him too when there’s a Rift surge?”

“All the way in Manchester, or London?” She shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Without data it would only be speculation. What’s special about those other dates you asked me to check on?”

“They’re the dates Sam Tyler and Alex Drake arrived in Gene Hunt’s life.” Both Anna and David gave me a now familiar dubious look.

“Arrived from the future?” David said.

“I know how it sounds, guys, but –”

“Jack,” David said. “I researched Sam Tyler and Alex Drake. I’ve seen their birth certificates, their school reports. Their histories are real.”

“They are now,” I said. “But if you’d looked for Sam Tyler back in 1972 you would have found only a four year old boy. Same thing for Alex Drake a year ago. Well, not a four year old boy obviously.”

“Then you’re saying that when they arrived they…” Anna frowned. “What? Bent reality?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

David fiddled with the printout, pulling the strip of sprocket-holed paper from the side. “It’s difficult to believe that, Jack.”

“I know. But hear me out. In the year 2008, Alex Drake was shot. She told me this,” I added, in response to their looks.

“Hang on, you can’t say she was shot in the future,” Anna objected. “She will be shot.”

“To her, it’s the past.” I grimaced. I’m familiar enough with the difficulties involved in time travel. Word choice is the least of them. “So she’s shot and she’s killed, or on the point of death, I’m not certain. Sometimes a mind can go adrift. Don’t roll your eyes like that, please.”

“The mind goes adrift?” Anna sounded highly dubious. “What is this mind you mean? Some kind of essence? A soul? Some ball of energy? How can the mind exist without the body?”

“It can.”

“Explain how.”

“Anna, we don’t have time for that.”

David pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes. “If we’re going to have a debate about Cartesian Dualism I’m going to need more coffee.”

“We’re not debating,” I insisted. “Not now. Accept this, Anna.”

“I’m a scientist, Jack. I don’t accept things without evidence.”

“Tell you what,” David said. “Ask Alex who’s going to win next year’s Grand National and if she’s right, you can accept it then. But for now, can we hear the rest of what Jack has to say? Not that I’m saying I believe it, Jack,” he added. “Sounds like a right load of bollocks, but with what I’ve seen around here, my mind’s a bit more open than it used to be.”

“I think I forgot where I was,” I said, starting to get a headache.

“Disembodied minds floating around loose in the ether,” Anna said. Yeah, she seemed to be kind of stuck on that. She’d seen solid objects that had come through the Rift, but free floating minds was something else.

“Not the ether. The void. No space, no time. They can be there forever, unless something pulls them back. Usually, it’s their own body they go back to, that’s the easiest path, back to where they belong. But sometimes something can divert them.”

“Gene Hunt?” David said.

“Because of those particles?” Anna said.

“That’s right. They’re strong attractants to anything between the normal universe and the void. If someone was infected with them and the Rift was surging in power, they could suck in one of those drifting minds.”

“But to what?” Anna asked. “A new body?”

“Like you said, bending reality. Making a new universe in which Sam Tyler or Alex Drake had a place in Gene Hunt’s world.”

Anna and David looked thoughtful for a while, taking all this in until David at last shook his head.

“Still sounds like bollocks to me.”

“Me too,” Anna agreed.

I sighed. “Believe me, this is nursery stuff compared to some of the things I could tell you. Maybe you’re right about that coffee, David. We could all do with some. I’ll join you two in a minute.”

They looked at each other, seeing they were being dismissed and left together. I sat at the desk. Outside the room the printer still clattered away, line after line of data. But it all told me the same thing. Gene Hunt was the real problem. The particles in him created some kind of nexus. And if that nexus attracted Tyler and Drake, what else could it attract? What could it attract if Gene was actually really close to the Rift next time it flared? What if Gene Hunt was both problem and solution?


	3. Chapter 3

I met on the Embankment, in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament. Outside the government. Appropriate.

“Could there have been more?” Vincent asked. “Not just Tyler and Drake?”

“Possibly,” I said. “But those two had a connection to Gene Hunt’s world. It could be that’s why they could bend reality to fit into that world.”

“Connection? What’s their connection?”

“Tyler’s was place. The police station is still standing in his time. Drake’s connection is Tyler himself. She told me she studied him. I think that’s why she doesn’t believe this is real.”

Vincent harrumphed and leaned on the rail to look out at the river, at the pleasure cruisers passing by.

“Tyler was a problem because he knew it was real,” he said. “Drake is a problem because she thinks it isn’t real. And Hunt.” He looked at me. “He’s the real problem. The other two are just casualties.”

I gritted my teeth. “Sam was a casualty. Alex and Gene –”

“Need to be eliminated. You know better than I do what could happen to the timeline if Drake, or the next one that Hunt attracts, or the next one, says or does the wrong thing. I’m sorry. It’s a necessary evil.”

I agreed with the “evil” part.

“Have you thought any more about the offer to come and work here in London?” Vincent asked.

“I like Cardiff.”

“I thought a man like you would have more career ambitions than…” He smirked. “Pest control.”

“There’s more to the Rift than weevils.”

“And you want to be the big fish in the small pond?”

I didn’t answer.

“We’re still assessing your suitability to take permanent charge of Torchwood Three. Your handling of this mission will be an important test.”

I still didn’t answer. Did I really want the job? I thought so. Do things my way. Try to make sure what happened to Tom didn’t happen again. _Don’t think about Tom._ Well that couldn’t happen to me after all.

Vincent left me then. I knew my instructions. But instead of going back to my car, I walked along the embankment away from it. I just walked. As a Torchwood officer, I knew my duty. As a Time Agent, I knew the potential consequences of allowing Alex to live. At any moment she might… step on a butterfly. I’d accepted my duty when I’d understood that Sam Tyler was a threat. But what I’d had to do then…

I didn’t want to do it again.

I stopped at a phone box and heaved open the heavy door. Inside I dug change from my pocket and dialled.

“Anna, it’s Jack. Yes. I’m still in London. Anna, I need you to figure something out for me. I need you to figure out if you can purge the Rift energy from Gene Hunt.”

Was there a chance I could save them both?

Anna was protesting about what I’d asked of her and part of me wanted to tell her to forget it. Part of me wanted to go grab Gene Hunt and lock him in the Vault at the Hub and watch him every time the Rift flared. Watch him to see what showed up in his orbit. If the Rift energy Gene carried could attract time travellers, what else could it attract? Time sensitives? Time machines?

Tardis?

Of course it could be problematic keeping Gene in the Vault. There were the weevils to consider. I smirked to myself for a second – perhaps Gene wouldn’t scare them too much – then sobered. No, I couldn’t do that to the man.

“Anna, figure it out. It’s a matter of life and death.” I shook my head at the dramatic phrasing and hung up.

So I could possibly save Gene. With the particles gone, Vincent should agree he was no longer a threat. What about Alex? The option of letting her get to 2008 one second at a time like everyone else was out, Vincent was clear on that. And if I’d had a time machine I’d have been long gone myself. Which left only one choice. Take her out of time. Freeze her in the Crypt.

Of course, there was a catch. If I purged the Rift energy from Gene, Alex might lose her connection to this world. I didn’t know if the Crypt would protect her, or if she would simply vanish, her mind going back to the void.

But to be brutal about it, Alex was meant to be dead anyway. This had been a second chance for her. I wanted to help her, but if I couldn’t, then at least she’d lived a few months longer than she would have.

But Gene Hunt wasn’t meant to be dead.

~~

“Can you see Jack Harkness?” Vincent’s secretary asked, before I strode past her, earning a frown instead of the usual adoring look.

“Since he’s already in here, then yes,” Vincent said, looking up from his desk. “Did you complete your assignment already?”

“No I did not.”

Vincent nodded at the secretary and she left, closing the door behind her.

“I’m not going to kill them,” I said, folding my arms. “I’m not your damn assassin.”

“Getting squeamish in your old age?”

“I don’t get to have an old age.”

That didn’t faze Vincent. He just shrugged. “Okay fine. I’ll get someone else.”

“No!” I snapped. “They don’t have to die.”

“Jack, do you think I like it?”

“No, I don’t. Liking would involve having actual emotions.”

“Ah, personal abuse.” Vincent sighed. “You never had much imagination, Harkness.”

I snorted. This guy needed to go to bed with me. Then he’d learn something about imagination. Screw that, he just needed to go to bed with somebody.

“I have a counter proposal,” I said.

“Really?”

“I’ve got one of my people working on a way to purge the Rift energy from Gene Hunt. He’ll no longer attract any time travellers.”

“You think they can do it?”

“Yes,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel.

“Well, if that works I suppose it will take care of both problems. Without that Rift energy there’ll be nothing to hold Drake here.”

“I think I can save Alex too.”

“Aren’t you quite the hero today?”

“I’m trying. I want to put her in the Crypt at Torchwood Three. Freeze her until 2008.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow. “Interesting solution. Then she gets out and goes and resumes her old life.”

“That’s my theory.”

“Very interesting, yes. Shame it won’t work.”

“It will work.” Again that confidence I didn’t really feel.

“The Crypt won’t protect her when you purge the energy from Hunt.”

“I think it will.”

“A hero and an optimist.” Vincent looked at me, tapping his pen on the desk, and then he pressed the intercom and spoke to his secretary. “Could you bring in the item from my personal archives, number B85. Thank you.”

In a few minutes, she brought in a box and Vincent opened it to reveal an alien device. I knew what it was.

“So you don’t trust me?”

“I work for Torchwood, Jack. I don’t trust anyone. What was the date Drake ‘died’?” I told him and he dickered with the device. “I’ll set it for the day before, to give you time to get her back in place.” He finished the settings and handed the timelock to me. “You understand how it works? Any attempt to open her drawer in the Crypt before then and this will vaporise the contents.”

“I know how it works.”

“I’ll be dropping by to check you’ve put it on.”

“My word isn’t enough for you?”

“Get off your high-horse, Jack. It’s not a good place to throw stones from.”

“You’re straining your metaphors.” I put the timelock in my pocket.

“It’s security, Jack, that’s all. I do trust you, actually. But if someone else were to gain access, open the Crypt –”

“Okay, okay. I’ve agreed haven’t I?” I turned to go, but Vincent’s voice stopped me.

“You’re not getting the job, Harkness. You won’t be made the new head of Torchwood Three.”

I turned to look at him. He looked quite disappointed.

“I was going to disagree with the others actually, when they said you weren’t ready. But you just proved them right. You can’t make the tough choice. We’ll appoint a new head as soon as possible. You’ll be informed.”

He bent over his paperwork again and I watched him, frozen in place, barely breathing. The tough choice? If I purged the energy from Gene I lost the chance that it could have attracted the Tardis. I reduced the chance to finally escape this exile. How dare he say that I can’t make the tough choice!

“Why do men like you think the tough choice always means choosing someone to die?”

He looked up again. “Because it does. When you’ve finally learnt that, then maybe you’ll be ready for the job.”

He was wrong. Sometimes the tough choice is letting someone live. But I would never convince him of that. I strode out of the office and found a phone box when I got outside.

“Anna? How’s it going? Have you worked out how to fix Gene?”

“I have, but Jack, the equipment I’m using, it’s not exactly portable. Unless we’ve got a crane I don’t know about, you’re going to have to bring Gene Hunt here to Cardiff.”

Damn. Nothing’s easy. “Okay, no problem.” So I needed to get both Alex and Gene to Cardiff. Persuasion would be less trouble than kidnapping, but I’d take either option.

“So, bag over the head?” Anna asked. “Or Harkness charm?”

“I get the feeling from our previous meetings that Gene’s immune to the Harkness charm.”

“He’s what?” I heard the grin in her voice. “My God, Jack, you have to get him back here as soon as possible! We need to study such a unique specimen.”

~~

“Do you want to go home, Alex?”

She looked up at me from behind a stack of files. “I’ve still got a couple of hours work to do here.”

“No, I mean, do you want to go _home?_ ” I sat down at her desk. The rest of the room was quiet, most of CID out or gone for the day. The light was on in Gene’s office.

“Oh, so you _can_ get me home?” she said. “And you have a time machine I suppose?”

“Well, I used to have access to one, but not anymore. Look, Alex, you say you don’t think this is real. That I’m just a figment of your imagination. So in that case you should just take it on trust. You should just go along with my plan and you’ll wake up back home.”

She hesitated. “I have considered that. But what if you’re something else, not here to bring me back but to –”

“Why are you doing this paperwork?”

“What?”

“This paperwork.” I slapped a hand on the folders. “If this world isn’t real then there are no repercussions if you don’t do it. So why subject yourself to hours of boring paperwork if it doesn’t matter?”

That silenced her for a moment. “I think it could be a test,” she said eventually.

“Then I’m a test, Alex. A test of your faith. You want to get home and I’m giving you the chance. You’ll have to take a lot on faith. You won’t believe a lot of what I tell you. But if it works, you get home.”

She looked at me and I held her gaze, resisting the temptation to do the cocky Harkness grin. Give her the moment; let her think it through.

“I used to see things, Jack,” she said. “Hallucinations maybe, I don’t know. Visions. I felt that if I could just follow them, find the right door, I could get back. Like Sam did. He went back and then came back here.”

“What? Sam got back?” Well, someone might have told me that before.

“Perhaps because of the coma. He was in a coma, but I was, am – think I am – dead.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “I don’t see things any more. There is no path back there. I think I’m dead.”

“Then come back to Cardiff with me.”

“The future is in Cardiff is it?”

“Kind of. There’s one other thing. You ended up here because of Gene. It’s difficult to explain why. But I want to make sure this never happens again. That means that Gene has to come to Cardiff too.” I sighed. “I may have to cudgel him over the head of course.”

“Oh, he’ll come willingly.” She stood up, put on a white leather jacket, then walked across to Gene’s office, opening the door without knocking.

“Gene, I’m going to Cardiff with Captain Harkness. You’re not allowed to come.”

Twenty minutes later I was on my way west out of London with Alex in the back seat and Gene in the front. He was glaring at me, for impugning his masculinity by not letting him drive.


	4. Chapter 4

“Tourist information?” Gene said, as I took them through the concealed entrance. “In Cardiff? What information do you give people? Directions to England?” David, standing behind the desk, scowled at Gene.

“David, why don’t you show Mr Hunt around?” I said. “I’m sure there’s all kinds of things he’d love to see.”

David gave me an all too familiar, ‘are you crazy?’ look, but I just nodded. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be telling anyone about it later. David shrugged and led Gene away into the hub.

“Now you show me your time machine?” Alex said, that speculative look on her face.

“Your carriage awaits, ma’am.”

I led her to the Crypt and opened one of the chambers, one near the floor, with something of a flourish and a smile. But she just stared at me in horror.

“Oh, no way, Jack! I know what this is! My mind isn’t giving me a way home, it’s giving me a way to die! This is a mortuary.”

I bit down on a curse. Of course, I’d forgotten that as a police officer she’d seen rooms like this before, but in the ones she’d been in all of the occupants of the chambers were dead. Here, things were a little different.

“No, Alex, it’s not like that. I know what it looks like.” I tried a reassuring smile. “Think of it as a very cramped hotel room.”

She folded her arms and scowled. “You must be joking.”

Dammit, she was going to balk. What could I do? There were people in the Crypt, people who I could revive to show her. But would that convince her or just confuse her?

“Alex, this is the only way. I can’t send you into the future; I can only take you out of time and bring you back at the right moment.”

“But it’s… it’s a coffin, Jack.”

“I promise you feel nothing, you know nothing. You’ll come back and think no time has passed. It’s like a dreamless sleep.”

When she still looked down at the drawer, both dubious and a little frightened, I went on. “There are no guarantees. Even sealed in here, you may simply disappear, when we purge the energy from Gene. And all those years ahead, anything might happen. I don’t know for sure that I’ll still be here to revive you. But I’ll leave instructions to bring you out and take you home.”

She looked into the drawer again and back at me. I put on my best “trust me” expression.

“What happens if I don’t do it?”

“I am going to purge the temporal energy from Gene. I have no choice. And I’m pretty sure you’ll fade away from here if that happens. And even if you don’t… Alex, Torchwood won’t allow you to be at large, with what you know about the future.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed in fury. “You’re threatening me?”

“No. I’m telling you the stakes. I’d do what I can to protect you, but I’d rather send you home.”

She nodded and spoke quietly, more to herself than me. “I want to see my daughter again. And I want that to happen tomorrow. If I get in there, it can.”

“Yes.”

“Alright then.” She took off her shoes. I’d seen people do that before when getting into the Crypt. Like they were going to bed.

“You can leave the jacket off too if you want,” I said, as she stepped into the drawer. “You won’t be able to feel the cold in there once it’s sealed up.”

“Are you joking?” She chuckled, sitting down. “I’m going to sell it on eBay!”

“What bay?”

“I thought you’d had history lessons.”

“We didn’t learn every little detail.”

“Well, have fun finding out the details.” She lay down, adjusted her position, getting comfortable, as if that mattered. “Oh and speaking of clothes, you’d better make sure you get me out a couple of days before we need to be there.”

“Why, how long does it take to get from Cardiff to London in the future?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I mean, were going to have to go shopping. And do something about my hair!” I laughed at that and bent down, setting the controls.

“Good luck with Gene,” she said. “How are you going to explain where I’ve gone?”

“Don’t worry. That’s in hand. Good luck to you too, Alex. See you in 2008.”

~~

“Okay, Harkness, what the bloody hell is going on?”

David had already secured Gene in a chair and Anna was setting up the machine that would purge the energy from him. I’d ordered David to slip Gene a Mickey in his coffee, but he’d already fought his way back from the sedative and now sat glaring at me.

“Where’s Drake?” Gene demanded. “What have you done with her?”

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s gone home.”

“You’re a liar.” Gene struggled against the bonds holding him in the chair. “Where is she? Let me out of this, you kinky bastard!”

“You know we could have kept him unconscious for the whole process,” Anna said. “It would have worked just the same.”

I knew that, but I had a reason to have Gene awake, for now at least. Later of course, he’d sleep and then he’d remember nothing. Or he’d remember what I told him to remember.

“Gene, listen to me,” I said. “I’m sorry, Alex won’t be back. I’ve given her the best chance I can. The chance I couldn’t give Sam Tyler.”

“What?” Gene’s head snapped up, his eyes bored into me. “What do you know about Tyler?” His glare turned if anything, more incandescent. “You! Torchwood. If I find out –”

“Yes, me, Torchwood. I’m sorry. He was a threat. I’m sorry, Gene. It had to be done. You understand that, don’t you? That sometimes something just has to be done, even if the innocents suffer. You understand that.”

“Tyler was cracked in the head, but he was still a good copper. Are you telling me you killed him over all that future bollocks?”

“It was true!” I got closer to him than was probably wise, leaning on the arms of the chair. “I know you can never believe that. But it was true and it was your fault, and you’re here so we can make sure it never happens again.”

“My fault?”

“I can’t explain, there’s no time.” The machine behind me was humming and giving off a lot of heat. My shirt stuck to my sweating back.

“Hurry up, Jack,” Anna called over the loud hum. “We only get one shot at this, then this thing will take a week to build up the charge again.”

“Gene. I’m sorry. I am sorry about Sam.”

“Now, Jack!” Anna called. “Step away. I’m throwing the switch!”

I stepped aside and she threw the switch. The machine’s hum rose to a roar and then a scream. Aside from the noise and vibration, I felt nothing except the short hairs on my arms and the back of my neck standing up. But Gene yelled and then he screamed, engulfed in the field that drove the Rift energy from his cells. I didn’t see any glowing light, or sparkles of energy. I only saw a man in pain. I only saw one of my tenuous hopes to contact the Doctor vanishing before my eyes, lost in Gene Hunt’s scream of rage and pain.

The lights went out and the machine’s scream turned back to a roar then a whine and then the last stuttering before it was silent. In the red glow of the emergency lighting, Gene slumped in the chair, unconscious. I hurried to his side and checked his pulse. It was strong. Good.

“Help me,” I said to the others. “David, get him out of the cuffs.” David came forward with the key and Anna with her scanner. She directed it at Gene as David and me released him and lifted him between us, his arms over our shoulders.

“He’s clear,” she said. “The particles are gone.”


	5. Chapter 5

“She’s been in there since 1981?” Gwen asked.

“Yep.” I bent down to look at Vincent’s time lock on Alex’s drawer. Vincent may be long gone, but the time lock had done its job. So close now. The seconds ticked down and the time lock gave a small beep and went dark. Deactivated.

“If she’s actually there,” I said, wondering as I had so many times if the Crypt had protected her. Even if it had, there was a risk that when we opened it that protection would be lost and she’d fade. After all this time, after what I gave up back then, if that happened…

No. She didn’t need the Rift energy to hold her here. She belonged here. I smiled, almost nostalgic for that time when I’d first met Alex and Gene. Gene, who had long ago forgotten it all. Which was a damn good thing for my personal safety and comfort.

“Okay.” I looked at Gwen and Ianto. What if I opened the drawer and she had faded? Would they think she was never in there and that I’d gone mad? The thought made me smile. It wouldn’t be the first time they thought that. You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps. “Here goes.”

I took a deep breath and slid the drawer open. Alex lay there, eyes closed. I closed my eyes too and counted to three. When I opened them again, she was still there. I grinned. She stirred, gave a small sigh and opened her eyes.

“I hope so,” she said.

That threw me for a second, before I recalled my last words to her back in 1981. See you in 2008. She just answered me. Not surprising of course. The face looking down at her was the same one that looked down at her when I closed the drawer twenty-seven years ago and she had no sensation of that time passing. You closed your eyes in the Crypt and opened them again a second and a century later. I know that now.

“Alex,” I said softly. “You’re home. It worked.”

“What?” She sat up, though made no move to stand yet. “No, you haven’t closed the…” Looking around she saw Gwen and Ianto, who both gave her tentative, reassuring smiles. “Haven’t closed it yet.” Now she stared at me. “What is this, some kind of trick?” She looked at Gwen and Ianto again, looked at them hard. Not their faces, but their clothes, their hair.

“Yeah,” I said. “I probably should have explained something about me.”

“You haven’t aged a day in twenty-seven years!”

“It’s a long story.” I hadn’t explained back then, she already thought I was mad. And I’d hoped the issue wouldn’t come up. I’d hoped I would be long gone by now. “But I’ll explain later. This is 2008, I swear. You’re home.” I offered my hand to help her up and she stood and stepped out of the drawer.

“Alex, this is Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones.” They smiled again and she looked back at them cautiously, still studying their clothes.

“What happened to David and Anna?” Alex said.

“Ah, let’s not talk about that now.” Or indeed, ever. “You’ve got enough to take in.”

She still looked dubious, not quite buying it. Well, wait until she saw outside, saw the new Cardiff, that would convince her. But she didn’t need to see outside. At that moment Gwen’s mobile phone trilled and she grimaced.

“Sorry, Jack, thought I’d turned it off.” She took it out and answered the call, turning away from the rest of us. “Hi, Rhys. Make it quick, love, I’m at work.”

A blur of movement at my side and Alex flew past me and caught up to Gwen, grabbing the phone from her and staring at it. Alex laughed, a near hysterical edge to the sound.

“This is a mobile phone!” she cried. “It’s a mobile. It’s real. Oh my god!” She held the phone to her ear. “Hello? Who’s this? Rhys!” She shouted his name with the delight of someone hearing from a long lost friend. “Rhys! What year is it?”

“We’d better not let her see my iPhone,” Ianto said. “She might have a seizure of some kind.”

“It is?” Alex said, still talking to Rhys. “It really is? Thank you, Rhys, thank you!” She looked back at us and her smile went sheepish for a moment. “Sorry.” She handed the phone back to Gwen. “He sounds nice.”

“Er, thanks,” Gwen said, taking the phone. “Rhys, it’s me. No, just someone messing around. Yes, she’s a bit excitable.”

“Come on,” I said, taking Alex’s arm. “Let me show you what we’ve done with the place since you were last here. And we’ll give you a change of clothes, because damn, girl, that outfit!” The tight white jeans and the flouncy, raspberry-coloured satin blouse ensemble wasn’t really going to cut it out there.

“Throwing stones in glass houses comes to mind,” Ianto said, following us as we left the crypt. “At least she’s forty years closer to being in fashion than you are.”

“I prefer to think of my look as timeless,” I said. “I don’t think the same can be said of 80’s style.”

“Ignore him, Alex,” Gwen said, catching us up. “I love that jacket.” Alex took the white leather jacket off at once and handed it to her.

“Keep it, please.”

“I thought you were going to put it on eBay,” I said.

“Oh, now you know what eBay is?”

“I’m starting to fill in those details, yes.” We stepped into the Hub and Alex gasped. Not at those things that had been there twenty-seven years ago – or ten minutes from her point of view – but at rather those almost mundane seeming items, like flat screen monitors and laptops. She ran her hands over them. Various gadgets lay around, none of them remarkable to me, or even to Gwen and Ianto. Cutting edge, but Earth technology. But Alex pounced on each with ever more enthusiasm. When she grabbed a discarded Starbucks cup from a trashcan and kissed it I spoke quietly to the team.

“Ianto, go and make us all some… let’s make it tea.” I appreciated Ianto’s analogue coffee, but something calming would be good now. “Gwen, you take her to get changed. We need to go out and get her some clothes for tomorrow and sort out her hair.”

“Right, Jack,” they chorused and split up to their tasks. As Gwen took Alex’s arm and persuaded her to put down the wireless computer mouse she was now hugging, I smiled.

Welcome home, Alex.

~~

Her hair was the trickiest part. We had to find a crack team of hairdressers to get the perm out of it and make it straight again. But after a long and expensive session, it was done. Alex and Gwen went shopping. Best to get a new suit, I decided, so there’d be no issues with holes and bloodstains. They came back with a black suit Alex said was the same as the one she’d been wearing on the day she was shot.

Tomorrow. The day she was shot would be tomorrow.

She wanted to go out that night, see more of the new Cardiff that she’d gaped at when she’d left the Hub to go shopping. But I didn’t want to risk her being seen in public too much, so I sent Gwen and Ianto home and kept Alex with me, ordering in a pizza for dinner.

“Jack,” she said as we ate, after being quiet for a while. “Did it work, with Gene? What you had to do?”

“Yes. I took him back to London. He believed you’d taken a transfer. He forgot everything that went on here.”

“Forgot? How?”

“We have a drug we call Retcon.”

“I see. Well, I don’t, but I accept it. And after that? And the rest of them?”

I handed her a folder. “Here. I thought you’d ask. So we checked out what happened to the rest of your CID squad since 1981.”

She tried to take the folder from my hand, but I held onto it for a second.

“Alex. Don’t go and look for any of them.” I held her gaze, serious, even stern. “Whatever you felt for any of them. Whatever unfinished business you might have with any of them. These are not the people you knew any more. A day has passed for you, but nearly three decades have passed for them. Trying to contact any of them can only end in trouble.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

~~

Leaving Gwen to hold the fort, Ianto and I drove to London with Alex early the next morning. She was quiet in the car, except for occasional exclamations of delight at evidence of 2008. I could understand her brooding. She was going to die today. Not this her, but an earlier her. I waited for the inevitable question.

It came as the SUV began to negotiate the London traffic, Ianto at the wheel.

“Jack,” she said. “What if we stopped it? Stopped him shooting me?”

“We can’t stop it,” I said, glancing in the rear view mirror at her in the back seat. “It’s already happened.”

“But, it hasn’t. It’s going to happen later today.”

“It’s already happened to you. You remember it. It is going to happen, because it already has happened.”

“Oh, silly me,” she said rolling her eyes, “I thought it was going to be something complicated.”

“Sorry,” I said with a grin. “This time stuff can be tricky.”

“I think Gene Hunt would have called it a load of bollocks.” The profanity in her educated English accent made me chuckle and Ianto splutter a bit.

“What would happen if we tried?” Ianto asked. Not wanting to stop it, ready to go along with my orders, just curious.

“It would happen anyway. Whatever we do, time will find a way to correct and make it happen. Alex – the earlier Alex – would be caught in the cross fire if we tried to shoot him, something like that.”

“So what you’re saying is, time wants me dead. And that it will go out of its way to make it happen? Isn’t that lovely?”

“What time wants, time gets,” I said.

“A girl could become paranoid,” she muttered.

“Would you want it?” I asked. “Want it not to happen? Never go back there?”

She looked thoughtful. “Never see what I saw there? Never do what I did there?” She shook her head. “No. If it’s real then the good I did back then wouldn’t happen if I didn’t go back.” She smiled. “Anyway, you surely don’t want me to forget you, Jack Harkness?”

~~

We’d left a lot of time for the London traffic and the fact we’d have to park well away from the scene and sneak in without anyone spotting us. Especially of course, Alex – the other, earlier, Alex. A nondescript jacket over her suit, some dark glasses and a hat kept our Alex suitably disguised.

Careful, watching for the police, for anyone who might stop us, we made our way to the scene, arriving ahead of earlier Alex and her murderer. Hidden in shadows, waiting, Alex took off her disguise. It was a shame really to see her in the black suit, with the straight hair, after the more colourful outfit she’d come out of the Crypt wearing. Back in 1981 it had barely registered with me – except to think she looked damn hot in it.

“Wow,” Ianto whispered suddenly as Layton and earlier Alex appeared, him dragging her in, her talking to him, in that calm psychologist’s voice. I understood the “wow”. To see her over there and at my side at the same time made even a man of my experience feel kind of fractured.

“Dead woman walking,” Alex said softly. “God, listen to me.” she meant the other her, the one talking to Layton. “Don’t I ever shut up? Did I really think I could talk my way out of this? Who do I think I am?”

“Scheherazade,” I whispered. It was coming, the moment. “You don’t have to watch,” I said. “Turn away.” But she didn’t. She watched it, watched herself shot. Watched herself die. Perhaps she wanted to see her soul, her essence, her consciousness, the part of her that went back to 1981, see it come loose and float off into the void. She didn’t of course. Just saw the mundane horror of a senseless murder. Her words cut off by the shot. Her voice silenced in an instant.

Ianto was ready, the second after the shot. Recovering quickly from the shock of the killing – I heard him gasp – he drew the Taser. The wires shot out, the Taser crackled and Layton jerked and fell. Ianto and me ran over and Ianto jabbed a sedative into him before he could recover from the jolt.

“I’ve got him, Jack,” he said, in clean up mode. “You take care of Alex.”

For a second I didn’t know which one he meant. But really, now there was only one. I walked back over to her, still waiting in the shadows, perhaps understandably wary of coming any nearer her own corpse.

“I suppose it’s time,” she said, “to go back to my life. My daughter. Thank you, Jack.” She held out her hand and I shook it. “You kept your promise.” She pulled me in for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Ianto came back over and got his share before he handed her a mobile phone and a set of keys.

“From, ah, your pockets.” The dead Alex’s pockets he meant.

“Thank you. Goodbye, Jack. Ianto. I’ll call on you next time I’m in Cardiff.”

“I expect a Christmas card,” I called after her as she walked away, back to her life. When she left the warehouse I looked around to see Ianto studying me closely. “What?”

“So, back then. 1981. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“No!” I said, “I was too busy keeping her alive.” I frowned. “It’s a damn good question though. Should have made the time.” Ianto just muttered something under his breath in reply. “Come on. Let’s finish clearing up and go home.”

“We can’t stay up in London for the night? I just happen to have packed a change of clothes for us both.”

Had he now? “Gwen’s expecting us back.”

“I told her we wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Oh really?” I tried to keep the grin off my face, tried to stay as deadpan as him. “She was okay with that?”

“I think I would sum up her reaction as _nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more_.”

That finished my deadpan act and I laughed. “You think of everything, Ianto Jones. I like that in a man.”

We turned back to clearing up the murder scene. Lots to do, and then, Ianto was right, we deserved a night out up West. Tomorrow we’d take a leisurely drive back to Cardiff. The scenic route. Plenty of time to talk in the car. All this, it brought back so many memories of nearly thirty years ago. Tomorrow I’d talk of those memories. Of 1981 and the bargain I made. Of David and Anna and Vincent. Of Sam Tyler.

Long gone.


End file.
